With summer underway, six Kelsey Museum–sponsored archaeological projects are preparing for another season of fieldwork, research, and student training. In the coming months, Kelsey-affiliated faculty, staff, students, and alumni—as well as international collaborators—will undertake work at sites in Türkiye, Italy, Greece, and Egypt. Their projects range from excavation and survey to conservation, artifact study, environmental analysis, archival research, and community engagement.
Notion, Türkiye
At Notion, an ancient Ionian city on the western coast of Anatolia, project director Christopher Ratté and his team will continue investigating the site’s history. Work this season will focus again on the East Ridge House and Bouleuterion, while new research north of the West Ridge House will explore earlier phases of the site. The team will also study fortifications, analyze artifacts (including pottery and coins), conduct geophysical prospection near the harbor, and begin soil coring in open areas that may have been used for urban agriculture.
Gabii, Italy
The long-running Gabii Project will continue work at the ancient Latin city, where Kelsey involvement has helped strengthen the museum’s presence in Italian archaeology over the past two decades. This season will focus primarily on excavation, along with methodological experimentation and training. In his role as director for methodological innovation, Nic Terrenato will test and assess new approaches to archaeological practice while training staff and graduate students.
Emptyscapes, Gabii, Italy
Led by Laura Motta, the Emptyscapes Project returns to Gabii to investigate the “empty” spaces between early settlement clusters to build a fuller picture of urbanization in Iron Age and Archaic Italy. Rather than focusing on walls, roads, and buildings, the project examines areas without visible architecture to better understand how non-built spaces shaped early urban life. Following a promising first season, the team will expand its work through additional coring, test trenches, and ceramic study, as well as through sampling for phosphate and nitrate, micromorphological, and pollen and phytolith analysis, among other activities.
Pella, Greece
At Pella, Lisa Nevett and David Stone will lead another season of excavation, field survey, and finds analysis. Excavation will continue on a peristyle building, likely a house, with new trenches planned to define the structure’s limits and investigate earlier phases beneath its final occupation deposits. Meanwhile, the survey team will examine modern fields in the core of the Hellenistic city and areas near Pella’s eastern periphery, where cemeteries are known from earlier discoveries, to assess the density and character of the city center’s and suburban territory’s occupation. Ceramic study, archaeobotanical research, micro-debris analysis, geochemical sampling, conservation, and GIS documentation will further support this fieldwork.
Kephala and Ayia Irini, Kea, Greece
On the Cycladic island of Kea, Natalie Abell and her team will continue studying material from John Caskey’s 1960s–1970s excavations at Kephala and Ayia Irini. These sites offer important evidence for Final Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement, maritime exchange, craft production, and metallurgy. This season’s work will focus on clarifying the stratigraphy of unpublished areas of Ayia Irini by analyzing context pottery, excavation documents, and preserved architecture. The team will also analyze the metal and metallurgical assemblage from both sites and, if timing allows, collect samples for petrographic analysis.
Abydos, Egypt
Led by Janet Richards, the Abydos Middle Cemetery Project is planning a full-scale field season focused on excavation, reclearance, conservation, restoration, and collections analysis. Work will include completing the re-exposure of the Sixth Dynasty Weni mastaba superstructure and beginning mudbrick conservation and restoration. The team will also excavate tomb shafts north of the Weni complex and investigate an area east of a First Intermediate Period saint cult building to learn more about ancient community engagement with the site. Additional work will involve maintenance activities on the Weni exhibition in the Sohag National Museum and curatorial training sessions for Egyptian colleagues.
